1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the area of bill payment services, and pertains more particularly to processes for subscribers exchanging hosts in such services.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
It is well known that financial institutions, such as banks in particular, provide customers with bill payment services. In a typical implementation, the bank provides interactive interfaces through web pages accessible through a customer's Internet browser for the customer to list payees and to schedule payments. A customer, for example, may receive bills on a regular basis from the local electric utility, the telephone company, an Internet service provider, a cable company for TV cable service, credit card companies and from many other product or service providers. In the bill paying service of a typical bank the user may enter contact and mailing information for the billing parties, and may schedule payments to be made at a future date. This information is saved at the host, and acted upon as scheduled, with the bank issuing payment (typically a check) on behalf of the user, and the user's account is debited when the payment is made.
As might be expected, not all customers of a bank remain customers of that bank forever. Banking is a competitive business, and many people change banks on occasion for whatever reason. When a customer quits one bank for another, and that customer has an active bill paying account with the bank, the customer has to clear that account, perhaps paying some bills early, or canceling payments scheduled in the service, before finally closing the account at the bank. Further, the same customer, opening an account at another bank and desiring to still have a bill-paying service, has to redo the somewhat tedious process of entering all of the usual payees, and rescheduling payments for outstanding bills.
What is clearly needed is a system and method for seamlessly accessing bill payment data for a customer at one bank, and for transferring all of that information to another bank as a part of the process of opening a new account.